R. STEVIE MOORE has been producing smart,
idiosyncratic and distinctly personal pop music
at an alarmingly prolific rate for nearly 20
years now. Don't feel sad if you haven't heard
of him, though. The iconclastic New
Jersey-based
singer/writer/multi-instrumentalist has
functioned as a virtual one-man cottage
industry for much of his career, recording at
home on low-fi gear and generally bypassing the
established conventions of the mainstream music
industry.

The son of ace session bassist Bob Moore and
the nephew (sic) of original Elvis Presley
guitarist Scotty Moore, R. Stevie grew up in
the intensely conservative environment of the
Sixties Nashville establishment. He seemed
likely to follow in his father's footsteps but,
instead of pursuing a career as a studio
hotshot-for-hire or continuing a job flogging
country tunes for his dad's publishing firm,
the younger Moore chose to devote his attention
to his longtime infatuation with the tape
recorder.

Since 1976 Moore has sporadically released
vinyl compilations of his home recordings on a
variety of indie labels. Two of these, Verve
and R. Stevie Moore, 1952-19??, appeared in
Britain during the past year. But the bulk of
the artist's prodigious output is available
through his mail-order cassette club.
Moore's catalog presently includes
approximately 180 C60 and C90 cassette titles -
mainly his twisted melodic songs, but also
minimalist instrumentals, sound collages,
spoken-word material, radio broadcasts,
documentary recordings and other marginalia -
i.e., virtually everything he's ever written or
recorded. Moore runs the operation on his own,
dubbing the cassettes, scribbling the label
copy, and shipping the packages to a devoted
cult of RSM fans as far off as Tokyo.

Next month, New Rose in France will release
Teenage Spectacular, an all-new Moore LP which
like last year's Glad Music is a full -blown
studio project rather than a home-made outing.
And with the US college-radio underground
dominated increasingly by acts with
record-company support, Moore is itching to get
the new album an American release.

"I don't need gobs and gobs of money," he says,
"but it would be nice to get on a slightly
higher plane than the one I'm at now. At this
point, I'd probably sign on any dotted line
that's put in front of me, in spite of myself.
I've got so many gripes about the music
business, but on the other hand I can hardly
believe that I'm getting ready for my eighth
album to come out. And I've got this huge
backlog of dandy tunes. Which is more than a
lot of other people can say."

EAST COAST ROCKER (N.J.)
30 December 1987
by Harold DeMuir (Scott Schinder)
"THE BEST OF 1987"(THE YEAR IN REVIEW)

Another year, another list. How very thrilling. The Year In Rock was pretty much a usual parade of vain, self-aggrandizing jerkoffs conning the youth of Western Civilization into believing that they've actually got something interesting and relevant to say, with the occasional U2 or Springsteen getting canonized for not being corrupt goofballs. Indie labels produced plenty of good, respectable music in 1987, but the underground, both musically and politically, feels more and more like the mainstream music biz every year.
It's pretty depressing that certain people are distracting themselves and us from the spectre of nuclear annihilation by making moves to censor popular music---it's even more depressing that one of these people is a leading candidate for the presidency of the United States. I also suppose it's good that pop-music people are still doing lots of benefit projects, but it would be even nicer if our governments did their jobs rather than leaving the salvation of humanity in the hands of a bunch of geeky rock stars. Jeez, are we in deep shit.
On a more intimate note, I got a CD player this year, and it sure is fun fiddling around with all those cute numbers. Digital yuletide bribes may be sent to: HD, Franklin NJ. Cheers.

The bulk of Moore's music is on cassette (a
couple hundred of them) and available from his
own RSM Cassette Club, but in recent years he's
managed to release LP's culled from his tapes
on small labels like Cuneiform, Cordelia and
Hamster. Moore's work for New Rose has been a
bit more ambitious, however, and Teenage
Spectacular, like his previous New Rose
release, Glad Music, is a polished, thoroughly
professional studio job (maybe a little too
polished for those used to the unfinished
quality of his home efforts). This takes much
the same folky, oddball pop approach as on Glad
Music - Moore is probably sick of being called
"whimsical," but it's true. It's also true that
he's a brilliant songwriter, an engaging
performer, and an excellent producer, all of
which come to the fore here. The LP's only real
disappointment is his way-too-long cover of
"Cover of the Rolling Stone," which is
immaculately done, but pointless - a couple of
short originals could have taken up the
space.

NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS (U.K.)16 January
1988
by Paul Mann

AMONG THE songs not on the album, Moore
teasingly informs us on the sleeve, is the
brilliantly-titled "I Wish Marvin Gaye's Father
Would Have Shot Me Instead." I wish he had too.
But living as Moore does in a remote village in
the Earlyseventieswhiterock district of New
Jersey, there seems little chance that Marvin
Gaye's dad would have got close enough for a
pot shot. Moore experiments with a lot of odd
sounds and arrangements. All to the good, of
course - let's have something new, yes please
give it to us now Stevie. Unfortunately it's
experiementation by inhabitants of that sad
town that time forgot. Not experimentation at
all really, instead some fair approximations of
Kevin Ayers and Peter Hammill. The opening
track "The Bodycount" greets us with a first
line, "Just when you thought it was safe,"
which is enough to scare anybody
off.

UNDERGROUND
Magazine (U.K.)1987
by Dave Henderson

R. Stevie Moore is one of those American
oddities that people hail or dismiss as
"eccentric." Of course he's eccentric, but he
also writes very good pop songs, and on Teenage
Spectacular he manages to edit a touch of
humour into these songs, by way of intercut
"wackiness," various effects and the breadth of
styles which he adopts. R. Stevie should be
sponsored by the American people as one of the
few realistic pieces of rock 'n' roll history
they have left... and you should pick up on
this album to complete your education and give
you something to whistle in the bath.

It's difficult to say where R. Stevie Moore's
showbiz career went off the rails. Somewhere
along the line this guy, who, as a child,
duetted with Jim Reeves, played guitar for
Perry Como and whose father sessioned for Elvis
(Presley, that is, dummy!) rejected the whole
damn thing, preferring the company of a couple
of tape recorders in his bedroom.

Although Stevie's had a good half dozen LP's of
excellent pure pop madness released, the man's
main medium of output remains his own,
eponymously-named cassette club, which over the
past five years has issued some 200 cassette
albums (that's NOT a mis-print!). So, Mr.
Moore, are you a rampant exhibitionist, or
what?!
"In an aural sense I guess it's true, I am, but
I just want to make a complete picture. Being a
record collector and something of a historian,
hungry for any unreleased alternative sides or
takes, I wanted to be completely honest and
make EVERYTHING available - most of the tapes
are filled up, as well as released,
chronologically, so it's like opening up a
diary."

Cassette club activities have, though, had to
take a back seat recently due to the
preparations for his new (vinyl) LP, Teenage
Spectacular. New Rose, the label responsible,
takes a dimmer view of Stevie's home-recorded
excesses, preferring to concentrate on his not
inconsiderable ability to write a good tune:
they've sent him a few bob to record it in a
proper studio, and, wait for it... they're even
putting it out on compact disc! Isn't this
going to alienate die-hard RSM fans?
"Some people said I was trying to sell-out on
Glad Music" (Stevie's other "proper studio"
LP), "but as people won't have heard these
songs on home tapes, they won't be able to
bitch!... Well, they probably will, 'cause it's
a high-tech production" (he grimaces) "...but
it's still basically R. Stevie Moore!"

And a quick listen to some of the new mixes
reveals that it certainly IS! Don't waste a
minute, invest in this man today!

The ARCHIVE Of Contemporary Music
(U.S.)
1987
by David Wheeler

"Underrated" is not the word for iconoclastic
musical polymath R. Stevie Moore. "Criminally
underexposed" is more like it. For well over a
decade, Steve has been producing prolifically
(there are over 180 self-made cassettes
available from his tape club), work after work
of amazing brilliance. Slowly but surely, this
king of the do-it-yourselfers is making his
vast musical catalog available on vinyl as
well. Teenage Spectacular, the latest of his
half-dozen commercial releases, is the second
to be done entirely in a "real" recording
studio, and the crispness of the production
only highlights those characteristics which
endear him to listeners: his cantakerous wit,
his love of radio montage, and the incredible
scope of his musical vocabulary. As always, he
can be heard here lampooning the music biz and
its legion of albatrosses, but that's just a
part of his repertoire. "The Bodycount" is a
zesty evocation of the primal urge, and his
haunting arrangement of Dylan's "Who Killed
Davey Moore?" will give you the chills. Simply,
one of the most gifted guys around
today.

R. Stevie Moore, the legendary king of the home recordists, makes yet another appearance on vinyl with his third LP for the French label, New Rose (and eighth overall). What Moore does is record music-- lots of music-- in his home studio, then sells it directly via his Cassette Club, the catalogue of which currently includes nearly 200 cassette-only titles.
Every so often, compilations of his homemade music find their way to vinyl, but Teenage Spectacular is different in that it's a full-blown studio effort. Good tunes, good production and a clever cover all add up to a thoroughly professional effort.
Moore's brand of warped but melodic pop/rock/whatever is difficult to describe: try to imagine a rock and roll band that includes Frank Zappa, John Cage, Todd Rundgren and Tristan Tzara and you'll begin to get the idea. This LP is a little less strange than than his home efforts, but it's still plenty odd. Write him for a club catalogue– he'll be glad you did. (RSMCC address)

Tunes.Com••••by David ClearyALL MUSIC GUIDE

This lengthy album is a generally strong
selection of songs boasting a broad array of
styles, strikingly unusual and effective chord
progressions, wry and clever lyrics, and
inventive arrangements. The sound quality and
performing level is mostly good, more
consistent than in some other of Moore's
releases. "Hobbies Galore" is a fine
singer-songwriter tune delivered in sighing,
echo-drenched vocal manner with acoustic guitar
and click-track accompaniment. The whimsical
"Blues for Cathy Taylor" exhibits no trace of a
blues progression, but does have cunning lyrics
sometimes set off-kilter to good effect; the
song begins like a thinly twangy R.E.M. number
and then turns country-like when the vocals
commence. "I Love You Too Much to Bother You"
sets creepy-funny lyrics to funky XTC-tinged
music. "Everyone, but Everyone" is a lengthy
midtempo Todd Rundgren-influenced number. "On
the Spot" is a cheezy jazz-lounge
blues-progression-based selection complete with
"Okay, we're going to take a short break...me
and the band will be right back" voice-over.
There are five tiny tracks entitled "Non
Sequitur" that juxtapose minute snippets of
music, voice, sounds, and tape loops like
Edgard Varese's Poeme Electronique or
"Revolution 9" by the Beatles. Two highly
inventive covers also appear. "Who Killed Davey
Moore?" uneasily mixes Bob Dylan's muckraking
lyrics with an oddly upbeat musical
arrangement; the Dr. Hook song "The Cover of
'Rolling Stone'" is done first half a cappella,
second half energetic rocker. Despite a few
weak tracks, this is a highly recommended
release.

from RockCritics.Com
"Top Five Exclamations or Utterances in a Pop Song"

01: "(I'm not your) Stepping Stone"/Sex Pistols/ "We don't need permission
for anything"
02: "Cover of the Rolling Stone"/R. Stevie Moore/ "What do you mean no one
reads Rolling Stone anymore?"
03: "Call of the West"/Wall of Voodoo/"I used to be somebody, god damn
you...Don't walk away!"
04: "Boredom"/The Buzzcocks/"De dum de dum"
05: "Neon Forest"/Iggy Pop/"Oh I get it, one, two..." or "Okay, to the next
part"

COMMENTS:
If I gave this more thought, I'm sure I'd come up with a lot more.
HANDLE: Bill Smith, Chicago, Wednesday, June 12, 2002